QMI Agency

OTTAWA - U.S. talk show king Bill O'Reilly says the environment is a concern to all, but he's confident a secure pipeline from Alberta's oilsands to the Gulf Coast of Texas will be approved.

In an exclusive interview that airs Thursday and Friday night on Adler on Sun News, the respected cable giant with four million daily viewers says the economic spinoff from TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline outweighs environmental sensitivities.

"This will provide many, many jobs in the U.S.A.," O'Reilly says.

"And it will be good for the economy... That pipeline is going to happen, I think."

His comments come as opposition to the pipeline picked up its newest Hollywood ally - aging heartthrob Robert Redford.

In an interview with an anti-pipeline U.S. newspaper the Sundance Kid calls on President Barack Obama to veto the project, which has already passed stringent environmental hurdles.

And while Obama ponders a decision that could create 20,000 jobs and wean the U.S. off oil from countries with a long list of human rights abuses and other atrocities, Republican politicians visited Alberta and slammed environmentalists for misleading the public.

"They're just wrong. Energy security and jobs trumps this environmental assault right now in the United States," Illinois Congressman John Shimkus said after a tour of the oilsands.

While the public relations battle rages, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver was in Europe trying to win European Union support against a proposal being floated by the European Commission. The commission said it would push to label oilsands crude dirty because of the greenhouse gases created to extract it from the ground.

The EU does not import crude from the oilsands and many think it is unfairly using Canada to trumpet the environmental cause.

Oliver's travels took him to Paris, where he sent an official to Brussels to sell Canada's case and instructed others to write EU states to convince them the commission's edict is not based on sound science and is discriminatory, and could result in a nasty fight at the World Trade Organization.

"The EU has to do its homework," Oliver said after a speech to the International Energy Meeting. "We believe the EU's proposed approach is unfounded."